Culture and engagement

Setting the right tone

All employees are appraised against our values as part of our performance review process. Our Code of Conduct sets out the high standards of integrity and conduct we expect. It summarises the key policies and procedures that everyone should be familiar with and has been distributed to all employees.

Our induction process includes pre-start material on our commitment to customers as well as important topics such as diversity and inclusion, wellbeing, modern slavery, and data security.

Our Taylor Wimpey Inspire Awards recognise our employees who go above and beyond.

Employee engagement

Our latest employee survey was completed by 69% of colleagues and showed an engagement score of 93% (2022: 93%).

Higher scoring areas included health and safety, equality, diversity and inclusion, engagement, sustainability and line management. The survey also showed that colleagues think we can do more in relation to reward, simplification and standardisation, clearer career pathways and communication between different departments, functions and business units. The results of the survey were reviewed by the Board, our GMT, heads of function and regional leadership teams.

Employee forums

We have a National Employee Forum (NEF) to ensure that employee views on matters affecting the business are heard and represented. The National Employee Forum (NEF) members represent all parts of the business and the Forum is chaired by a regional Managing Director. The NEF met five times in 2023 and discussed a range of issues including skills and training, the development of our timber frame facility, changes to our schools outreach programme, reward and remuneration, updates to our performance review process, our charity partnerships, sales updates, policy changes, business restructuring and our IT roadmap. 

Each business unit as well as our strategic land division, head office and logistics business has its own Local Employee Forum (LEF). These include elected employees, with each key function represented, as well as members of the local leadership. LEFs meet at least twice a year and feedback from the sessions is reviewed by regional and Group management, and informs the agenda for our NEF meetings where appropriate.

Our Board has appointed an Employee Champion to strengthen engagement with employees and champion the ‘employee voice’ in the boardroom. In 2023, this was Mark Castle, one of our Non Executive Directors. 

Engaging young talent

Our National Young Persons Forum helps us to engage with our young talent and potential future leadership. The Forum has 18 members from across the business including office and site based employees, and representatives from our graduate, management trainee and apprenticeship programmes. All members are aged under 27 and the Forum meets four times a year. 

Labour relations

The Construction Industry Joint Council (CIJC) Working Rule Agreement is an industry-wide collective agreement between employer and trade union representatives. It governs the pay rates of operatives on our sites as well as factors such as fare and travel allowances, holidays and sick pay. Pay rates are above the voluntary living wage. Around 35% of direct employees are also covered by the agreement.

Raising concerns

We encourage employees to share any concerns with their line manager or a member of the HR team. 

For breaches of our policies or suspected cases of unethical conduct, employees can raise these with their direct line manager, another manager or by reporting to our Group General Counsel and Company Secretary, Group HR Director or Head of Internal Audit. This includes any form of harassment or bullying, or if any employee has reason to believe that modern slavery of any form may exist within our organisation or our supply chain, or may occur in the future. We also operate an independent confidential whistleblowing hotline, Safecall, available to all employees and subcontractors. We remind employees about these arrangements through our Respectful Workplace Training.

Workforce turnover

During 2023, we directly employed, on average, 4,618 people across the UK (2022: 5,140) and provided opportunities for, on average, around 9,300 operatives on our sites (2022: 11,100).

Our voluntary employee turnover was 14.2% (2022: 17.7%), meeting our goal to keep this below 15%. We have introduced an exit interview process to improve our insights into why people leave the business.

We restructured parts of our business in early 2023 to improve efficiency, reduce costs and respond to challenges in the housing market and the wider economy. We provided training and guidance to managers to help them support colleagues during this time.  We aimed to treat anyone affected by redundancy fairly and respectfully, including offering outplacement support, and where possible redeployed affected employees into alternative roles in our business.